Tertiary Oil Recovery- Know About It in Details
Oil extraction is divided into three
stages: primary, secondary, and tertiary, sometimes known as Enhanced Oil
Recovery (EOR). Hydrocarbons that naturally rise to the surface or those that
require artificial lift mechanisms, such as pump jacks, are the only ones that
can be recovered by primary oil recovery. Water and gas injection are used in
secondary recovery to displace the oil and drive it to the surface. Tertiary oil
recovery, sometimes known as EOR, is a method of increasing oil
production. Although more expensive to implement on a field, EOR can enhance
well productivity by up to 75%.
Categories of EOR
To varied degrees, three key categories of
EOR have been shown to be financially successful:
Thermal recovery – It is the use of heat, such as the injection of steam, to reduce
the viscosity of heavy viscous oil and improve its capacity to flow through the
reservoir. Thermal processes account for more than 40% of EOR generation in the
United States, especially in California.
Gas injection-In this method, gases such as natural gas, nitrogen, or carbon
dioxide (CO2) expand in a reservoir to force additional oil to a production
wellbore, or other gases dissolve in the oil to reduce viscosity and improve
flow rate. In the United States, gas injection contributes for roughly 60% of
EOR output.
Chemical injection- It can involve the use of long-chained molecules known as polymers
to boost the efficacy of waterfloods, or the use of detergent-like surfactants
to help lower surface tension, which frequently hinders oil droplets from
migrating through a reservoir. Chemical approaches account for around 1% of EOR
generation in the United States.
Each of these treatments has been limited
by their relatively high cost and, in some situations, their unpredictable
effectiveness.

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